Personal: Shoot Em' Up Like Annie Oakley

     Being that my husband is in the military I am used to him having to leave. Whether it be in on a deployment, training exercises, or whatever, I have come to the cold reality that my husband will be away and I will have to hold down the fort. In saying that, I can honestly express that I can NEVER sleep well without Jermaine home. I am probably one of the most paranoid people I know. Anytime I come home from after going to the grocery store or running an errand I always have to do a sweep of my house to ensure there is no 'boogie man' lurking in any closets, under the beds or anywhere else anyone can hide. Now that I have moved to Florida and in a new location, I am more "unaware" of my surroundings than ever.
   Not only do I have to worry about unfamilair people in an unfamilliar place, but I now have the luxury of worrying about gators, snakes, and panthers. Yeah, that's right, freaking panthers. So about a month ago I came to the realization that I needed a gun. Ok, well not need a gun, but definitely want one to feel...more secure. I awoke three Saturdays ago telling my husband that I wanted to go to the gun shop to look for a pistol. That was the equivalent of him saying to me; "Let's go to Sephora to go make-up shopping". Within the hour we were at our local gun shop to check out what pistols they had that would be suitable for me.

    Being a California girl, I have never been familiar with guns. California being such a liberal state and with so many hoops you have to go through to get a gun 'legally', I did not grow up with a gun in my household, so I was always deathly afraid of them. Being that my husband is in the military and because of his job, he is very much familiar with weapons. I can honestly say I have the best teacher in the world on how to handle a weapon, and still it doesn't mean they don't scare the shit out of me. So before visiting the gun shop, Jermaine was sure I would do well with a .22 pistol. Determined to buy a .22 that day, I walked in not knowing what the hell I was doing. As soon as I walked in the store clerks started bombarding me with all kinds of different pistols, handing them to me, expecting me to do..god knows what but, I just felt so out of place. Not knowing what the hell was expected of me and how to react with all these pistols being pushed in my direction. Finally, I turned to Jermaine and told him that I needed to shoot these first. Without hesitation, he agreed and we were on our way to their sister store which has an outdoor range in a nearby town.

   At some point while at the gun shop we came on the topic of shooting a .380 over a .22. What and how that happened, I don't know, it is still al a blur to me, but Jermaine coincidently agreed and I was roped into shooting a .380 over the .22 I was prepared to shoot when we got to the range. 

[*A little gun lesson, a .22 caliber bullet is smaller than a .380 caliber bullet and subsequently has a bigger "kick" aka recoil when you shoot the gun, which can make shooting a gun with a larger bullet pretty scary.] So I shot two different .380's. A Walther .380 (which I HATED btw, I couldn't pull back the slide to chamber the round which really pissed me off and needed Jermaine to do for me.)

 Once I was able to actually chamber the round the recoil or 'kick' was...well, more than I expected.

The second .380 I shot was a Bersa Thunder, which I LOVED.

I don't know what it was but I felt 'at home' with it. This is the gun I decided to buy after shooting it a few more times. 

[This was apparently the wrong stance, I was leaning away and afraid of the recoil]

[Readjusted better stance]

   All in all I am happy with my decision. Obviously I know that guns are not for everyone, but I personally feel like guns are the right choice for me, especially with my husband being away as frequently as he is. For my piece of mind I feel more secure as a gun owner to protect my household against whatever threats might be out there. I am also signed up for a Conceal and Carry class which will further teach me about gun and gun safety along with the laws and regulations about guns in Florida and the ability to carry my gun on my person or concealed in my car (aka in the glove compartment) if I see fit. 

Daily Food Pics: Breakfast

The last few days I have been waking up a lot earlier than usual, so I have had a lot more time and energy to get breakfast started for myself and the family. I have stayed on target with eating eggs with breakfast almost every morning and half the time eating eggs for a second meal in the day. Hey, you win some, you lose some. But none the less I have been pretty proud of myself on my consistency with my healthy breakfasts. 

I didn't get the chance to work out much this week since Jermaine had the car and I had a ton of errands and household things to accomplish that I was completely beat by the time I had a moment to myself. *excuses, excuses* I hear you saying, but honestly this week has not been easy, and really has kept me super busy. I actually had a spare moment to hit up the gym today but of course my gym is closed on Sundays [my luck, right?] so laying around the house watching murder mysteries on Netflix it is. Ugh such a rough life I know...LOL! Tomorrow I plan on getting back into my P.M. workouts since my schedule this week is far less hectic than this week. 

Personal: Just another day at the park...

  Jermaine and I have been trying to explore our new surrounding bit by bit over the last few weeks and since today was absolutely gorgeous outside we thought we would check out the local parks and recreation. K.J. was super excited to play at a new park and honestly we were pleasantly surprised at the park options they offer in such a little town.

Today we went to Twin Hills park. It boasts a trail, lake, pond, playground, basketball courts, tennis courts, and gymnasium. It was the perfect warm day for us to get out and a little bit of family fun and "active rest".

I've never seen this toy before. Its like a single person merry go round, she loved it until she got pretty dizzy and let go, haha!

 We went for a walk on the trail across from the kids park and Jermaine was refusing to hold my hand(all because I might or might not have called him mean..LOL) so I took a picture of him holding my wrist, that was the best he would do...jerk. Haha!

I have not a clue what this building was but it was pretty and I had to get a picture in front of it. 

After we went to a frozen yogurt place not too far called Chill. It was the perfect ending to a day at the park.

 Mine was low fat pomegranite and strawberry with mango boba, strawberry boba, mochi, white chocolate chips.

 Jermaines was NY cheesecake &  strawberry yogurt with strawberries and cheesecake chunks, what a rebel huh, lol!

 K.J.'s honestly was a cluster "f" of random yogurt, candies and sprinkles..basically a kids wonderland.

 Fin.

Personal: Just me & you...

I just wanted to sit down for a moment and talk about things going with me lately. Our move to Florida has been extremely stressful over the past couple months and I finally have been able to sit down and take it all in. Moving from North Carolina I was so ready for the change. My husband had been stationed at Fort Bragg, NC for over 7 years [which is like, unheard of in the military community] so being able to start out in a new place is refreshing. However; Florida has not been everything we thought it would be. Initially, we thought we would be moving to a very metropolitan area similar to that of Miami or Orlando, but we quickly learned that is not the case. We definitely live in a pretty small town area. It was a bit of a blow for me since I am a California girl, who for years lived in Las Vegas, and am used to busy and highly populated areas. After living in small military town in NC for so long, I was really hoping for Florida to give me that change of atmosphere. Everything isn't all bad, but still, I can't help to be a little disappointed :(.

 On the plus side, the school district that I moved to is one of the top districts in the state of Florida so that amazing for K.J. She loves her new school and she is making friends fast so that great. Her birthday is also rapidly approaching in the next week, so I am pulling my hair out coming up with ideas for her big number 5! 

Who can resist that face?!? LOL

Fitness Blabber: You know you're out of shape when...

    When you go to the gym that you just signed up for and the guy at the front desk goes out of his way to single you out, out of everyone standing around you to "get an assessment on your fitness and how you can start getting yourself into shape". [Insert horrified look imoji here]. The thing is, I know the guy is just doing his job, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't burn me up any less. I think it bothers me so much because I used to be the fit girl. Now I am the not so fit girl apparently, and it grinds my gears for someone else to point it out to me. But it was also a good thing that he did that though, because I BEASTED THEE SHIT out of my workout today.
   Jermaine didn't have to be to work until the afternoon, so I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a workout this morning. I did a lot of HIIT training [I can't remember everything I did since I was in beast mode and kind of blacked out] but it consisted of tire squats, jump rope, box jumps, wall sits, etc...and my body was burning, but not as much as the fire I felt on the inside after the gym guy tried to have me assessed. I am definitely one of those people who thrive on negativity. ESPECIALLY in the gym. The best thing you could do is piss me off before or while I am at the gym because I will get all the way turnt up in that mutha'. Or tell me that I can't do something, watch me.

A midway workout shot trying to flex my "work in progress" guns. 

    Before my workout I had a pretty decent sized breakfast because I wasn't initially planning on going to workout this morning, but after I had started my breaky, I found out my husband wasn't going to work until the afternoon so I scarfed it down before heading to my workout. Thats honestly what probably gave me the energy to beast through the workout the way I did. 

  

    I followed up with a protein shake when I got home since I almost always forget to make a shake post workout, which I know is not good in regards to results and muscle building. Nothing fancy, but its quick, tastes pretty good and helps to fill me up after depleting myself. A couple of hours later I ate an omelet with turkey bacon, but forgot to photograph it :/.

My after lunch but before dinner snack of some apple slices and PB. Not any particular kind, just some random store brand I had in my cupbord. 

For Dinner I decided to tackle the all elusive Spagetti Squash. Well...not so elusive, but it was my first time tackling the task of the Spagetti Squash so it was elusive to me. I have read so many recipes, blog posts, and articles on Spagetti Squash, but never really had the balls to try it out myself. Today that ended. 

 
First off, this damn thing is hard to cut. VERY similar to a pumpkin in density as well as the way it looks on the inside once you can get the damn thing open.

You want to scoop out all of the "innards" and place it face down on a lightly oiled baking sheet (I used olive oil) and bake at 400 degrees for like 40-50 mins.

Once it's all done, the outer shell should be very soft and tender and let it cool first before taking a fork to the inside and stringing out the squash into the "spagetti" strands. Quite honestly I probably over cooked mine a bit, but I didn't mind, it still tasted awesome!

I paired it with some sweet potatoes, baked chicken, and bbq baked beans for dinner. It.Was.PHENOMENAL.  I will definitely be putting spagetti squash into heavy rotation in the upcoming months, so be prepared to see more of this in future posts :).